Check the current local time in London, United Kingdom. London uses the Europe/London time zone, with GMT (UTC +0:00) during standard time and BST (UTC +1:00) during daylight saving time.
GMT
UTC +0:00
Used outside daylight saving time
BST
UTC +1:00
Observed during daylight saving time
DST ends
October 25, 2026
Based on Last Sunday in March / Last Sunday in October
London runs on GMT (winter) or BST (summer), flipping on the last Sunday of March and October. City of London financial hours anchor the European trading day — LSE opens 8 AM GMT/BST. London sits 5 h ahead of New York (winter) / 4 h (summer), 4.5 h behind Mumbai, 8 h ahead of San Francisco (winter). The transatlantic banking meeting window (8-11 AM ET / 1-4 PM GMT) anchors on London.
Europe stretches across four main timezones — GMT/BST (UK, Ireland, Portugal), CET/CEST (most of continental Europe), EET/EEST (Greece, Finland, the Baltics), and MSK (Russia's westernmost cities). Most countries observe DST in unison — last Sunday of March to last Sunday of October — creating clean 1-hour steps between neighbouring zones. Icelandic and Russian cities are exceptions with no seasonal shift.
London is the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) — the baseline from which every UTC offset on Earth is measured. The city's Europe/London timezone switches between two states each year: GMT (UTC +0:00) during winter months and BST, British Summer Time (UTC +1:00) from late March to late October. This single-hour shift affects scheduling for millions of international businesses, traders, and remote teams every spring and autumn.
As one of the world's three major financial centres alongside New York and Tokyo, London's business hours carry outsized global weight. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) opens at 8:00 AM and closes at 4:30 PM GMT/BST. The "London-New York overlap window" — roughly 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM London time when both markets are simultaneously open — is the highest-liquidity period in global foreign exchange trading, accounting for over 30% of daily FX volume.
Scheduling calls across time zones requires knowing where London's business day falls relative to your city. London is 5 hours ahead of New York (EST), so a 9:00 AM meeting in London is 4:00 AM in New York — too early. The sweet spot for transatlantic calls is 2:00–5:00 PM London time (9:00 AM–12:00 PM ET). From Mumbai and Delhi (IST), London is 5 hours 30 minutes behind, making mid-afternoon India time (1:30–6:00 PM IST) the best window. From Singapore and Hong Kong (UTC +8:00), London is 7–8 hours behind, so Singapore mornings of 3:00–5:00 PM SGT correspond to 7:00–9:00 AM in London. Teams in Sydney face the greatest challenge — with a 10–11 hour gap, virtually no standard business hours overlap.
Daylight saving time in London follows the EU-origin rule: clocks advance one hour on the last Sunday in March at 1:00 AM GMT (becoming 2:00 AM BST) and fall back on the last Sunday in October at 2:00 AM BST (becoming 1:00 AM GMT). Importantly, this shift does not align with DST changes in the United States, which typically occur a few weeks earlier — creating brief periods where the usual US–UK time gap is one hour different from normal.
Standard business hours in London run 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM GMT/BST, Monday to Friday. Banks and government offices typically open at 9:00 AM and close at 4:30–5:00 PM. Financial services firms often operate 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM to cover both Asian market closes and US market opens.
Local Exchange
Europe's largest exchange by trading volume. Home to FTSE 100.
Daylight Saving Time
DST ends on October 25, 2026. Clocks fall back — sunrise and sunset shift one hour earlier in London.
These cities share the same time zone as London — when it's 7:04:28 AM here, it's the same local time there.
Major cities in United Kingdom — some may be in a different time zone than London if the country spans multiple zones.
Find the perfect overlap time between your timezone and London. Our calculator shows when business hours align.
Calculate Best Calling TimeEverything you need to know about London time
